Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“You born in a barn? Get in here. Close that door. You’re letting the cool air out.”
I step inside quickly, like I would have when I lived here. Old feelings rush back. I’m a little afraid of her, aware she isn’t above the type of harsh discipline she received as a girl. It’s dim, the light mostly coming from the television and an ancient-looking computer monitor sitting on a folding table nearby. And it’s the same television we had before—the boxy kind, no flat screen—after more than twenty years. I stop, absorbing it all. The house smells off—almost sour, like bad food, maybe urine, too.
“Mom?” I say again, because I can’t quite believe my eyes. My mother was once a woman proud of her curves, frequently declaring, “God made me this way,” and that she had “good child-bearing hips.”
Now she looks like an image from a magazine—a starving child, maybe a person who lives somewhere riddled with disease. Skin and bones. Cheeks hollowed out. Blond hair stringy, limp, and dirty. I can’t quite understand what’s going on, what’s happened, but of course, it’s been a long time. A lot can happen in twenty years, and apparently it has . . .
“You just gonna stand there?” she snips.
“Um . . .” I blink again, then cross through the kitchen into the living room, over the threadbare imitation Persian rug, which is also more than two decades old. I nearly trip over an empty bottle of what is likely gas station whiskey and offer her a one-armed hug. This close, I can hear the wheeze in her chest, smell a sickly scent of . . . I’m not sure what. But something isn’t right. I slowly sit down in the chair across from her.
“Mom?” I ask, forgetting all about the reason I came here. “What’s . . .” I flush, aware that I’m close to telling her she looks like shit, the sort of thing that would have gotten me slapped when I was a kid. But I’m not a child anymore, even if it suddenly feels like it. I take a deep breath and continue. “You seem sick. What’s going on? Why didn’t you call?”
She gives me a long look. Even her eyes are off, the whites having turned an unhealthy shade of yellow. “You have your own life. You don’t want to be a part of mine. Besides, I have the church. I didn’t need you.”
Ouch. Cut to the bone.
I stare at her. “What’s wrong, though?”
A heavy sigh. “I’m dying, Elizabeth. Isn’t it obvious?”
Her words echo in my head, cause a clench in my stomach. Like someone’s punched me in the gut. I barely speak to her anymore, and yet . . . she’s still my mother. I search for words but come up empty-handed.
“Pancreatic cancer. I have one, two months to live. Tops.” She reaches for a glass of amber liquid that I’m sure is liquor and takes a big gulp like it’s lemonade. “So, to what do I owe the honor of your presence?”
Straight to business. As if she didn’t just drop a bomb on me. I open my mouth, thinking of saying to visit you, of course, but we’ll both know I’m lying. So I don’t. I let the silence settle between us.
“Well, if you’re just gonna sit there, can you at least hand me those?” She gestures to the coffee table, to a dozen orange prescription bottles sitting between us.
My gaze falls on them—the names are all twelve letters long, practically another language. But I do recognize one—oxycodone.
“Mom, you shouldn’t be mixing this with—”
“I know, I know. Heard it from the doctor. I don’t need another lecture, especially from you. Just give it to me.”
I guess I can’t blame her. If she’s dying anyway, why bother stopping a lifetime of trying to kill herself? I gather up the pill bottles and move them to where she can reach.
“Did you get a second opinion?”
“Got three. It’s too late. It’s spread all over.”
I swallow and try to imagine a world without my mother. It should be easy, because at this point, she’s barely part of my life. And yet the idea of her being gone, completely gone, and me unable to pick up the phone and call her . . . leaves me feeling unmoored. She’s all I have, even if we don’t really have each other anymore.
“Mom, maybe you should come up to New York. See some doctors up there?”
“Shut up, child. I don’t need any such thing. You think you’re better than me living in that highfalutin city of yours, that the doctors know more because they pay ten thousand dollars a month to live in a shoebox? You know what that makes them? Dumb. My doctors here—where we take care of each other—are just fine. I’m dying, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It doesn’t even bother me anymore, because I’ll be with Jesus soon, and then nothing will hurt ever again. When was the last time you went to the Lord’s house, anyway?”